An Elixir Realigning
A collaborative performance project about health and the city, performed in Berlin, with fellow artists Karla Sachse, Varsha Nair, Deeksha Nath, Lilian Kim Lucas, Aaron Schwarnagel and Simon Troll. Presented as part of MERIDIAN | URBAN – Curatorial Projects on Health by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
Images by Saskia Nagel, Christoph Scheierke and Susanne Ahne.
From the exhibition brochure:
A human body, like the body of a town, is commonly seen as always being well. Wishful thinking wants to place it far from any mental or physical sickness.
Urban planners of yore conceived the layout of towns and cities as analogous with the human body — thus keeping in mind the inner and outer flow of spaces we inhabit. Old traditions — such as the Chinese system of meridians, Indian Ayurveda and the Occidental practice of alchemy — can help us understand the relationship between inner vigor and external health.
Addressing structural, physical and psychological conditions, we brew an elixir consisting of 7 ingredients with beneficial health properties, each introduced by the 7 participants in the project. The base ingredient is water infused with the mineral strength of fluorite, to which is added asafoetida, St. John’s Wort, tualang honey, twitch grass, cocoa and turmeric.
The performance, each for the duration of 70 minutes, treats 7 sites along the Street of the Invalids in Berlin, which can be regarded as a significant meridian that connects the once divided city again.
